--Look, stick to the subject at hand, if you want to continue the debate with me. The fact is there was obviously some kind of problem with the sewer line, which the city wouldn't fix.--
Kind of hard to fix the problem when the guy won't let you on the easement and ends up murdering your workers ...
Red herring removed.
He had already fixed the one problem before the shooting, and the city wouldn't compensate him for it. Now, if there truly were other problems to be fixed (and we don't know this from the information in the article), what steps did the city take to notify the Watsons prior to starting work? Did they maybe show up unannounced on the Watsons' doorstep on occasions before the shooting, with a backhoe and a crew ready to go at it? Did he maybe tell them, on these occasions, to go away, that he was tired of their sh** (no pun intended)? Is this maybe why the city sent a cop with the crew on the day of the shooting? I don't know from the info in the article, and neither do you. If this was the case, maybe he should have gotten a lawyer involved long before the situation came to a head, but that's water under the bridge.
That said, I reaffirm my original position that, given the facts I gleaned from the article, he had every right to defend his property. Maybe he didn't do it the right way, and should have thought about it a little more. However, if there was a history of harassment on the part of the city against Mr. Watson (as the neighbor stated in the article), maybe he had thought about it.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!